Service centers and telephone service centers, also called call centers, are used for telephone sales, marketing, collections, customer service and customer inquiry. A call center typically has a plurality of agents who staff a plurality of agent data terminals and who communicate with the customer via telephone and other media, such as letters, facsimile (fax), and electronic mail (e-mail). The communication may be initiated by the call center (an outbound call) or may be initiated by the customer (an inbound call). Examples of call centers which accommodate both inbound and outbound calls are shown in the following U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,797,911; 4,894,857; 5,070,525; 5,214,688; and 5,309,505.
However, a single information source, such as a host, database, server, or other information source, may not have all the information on a customer, or the latest information on a customer. It is possible to sequentially access multiple information sources so as to obtain the desired information. However, the agent must know which information source to access and how to access the desired information. This process is inefficient because the information sources are frequently incompatible and the information from one information source cannot be directly used to gain more information from another information source. Rather, the agent must often write down the information from one information source and manually enter the information to gain the additional information from the second information source. In addition to the time that this manual procedure requires, errors can occur, both in writing down the information and in entering the information. The result is that the agent is limited to only a single information source application if rapid processing is desired, or the agent must manually record and enter the information if multiple information sources are used.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and an apparatus which allow the agent to obtain the desired information from a plurality of information sources quickly and automatically, regardless of whether that information is in the form of text, fax, graphics, images, e-mail, video, audio, or some other media.
Another difficulty with using multiple information sources and applications is that there is generally no consistency among the application programs as to the screen display, formats, images, or even the function keys used for information processing or manipulation. For example, there is no consistency, from application program to application program, as to where, or even if, in a customer record the following information will be located: the customer name, the customer address, the customer account number, a picture, a signature, etc. As a result, an agent will often have to visually inspect each field in the record to determine what information is in that field and whether it is the desired information. This slows down the agent and increases the likelihood of an error, for example, the agent entering or retrieving the data in a similar-looking, but incorrect, field. Similarly, from screen to screen, the function keys may initiate different tasks, or the same task may appear on different function keys. This leads to frustration, delays, errors, and a general loss of efficiency.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and an apparatus which present a uniform set of screens for the agent and which automatically accesses, in the background, the correct field in a record on the desired information source when an item of information is desired.
There is also a need for a method and an apparatus which, from screen to screen, and from information source to information source, present uniform and consistent data manipulation icons to the agent.
Even if multiple hosts can be conveniently accessed by the agent the agent must sometimes query one host to obtain a first item of information, use this first item of information to query a second host to obtain a second item of information, use this second item of information to query a third host, and so on. This is a time consuming process and leads to low agent efficiency. Further, the agent must know the proper sequence of accessing the hosts or the agent will not have the necessary information on hand when accessing an application and, therefore, will not be able to obtain the needed information from the host.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and an apparatus for automatically accessing a plurality of information sources in a manner and in the order necessary to obtain the desired information.
Agents interact with customers/clients on the telephone and there is typically some information associated with that customer. For example, on an outbound call, the call record usually has a minimum of the customer name, customer telephone number, and how to contact the customer. In addition, there may be a detailed history or various other information about the customer. All of this information may assist the agent in providing the desired service to the customer while the agent is on the telephone with the customer.
In a client-server system, there are numerous information sources where the agent can obtain information about the customer. For example, a mainframe owned by the user, information from a credit bureau, or an image server showing pictures of products or customers, or signatures of customers, etc. Other information may be residing in data bases on a network or in other places, some of which may be remote and only accessible via modem. Such information could be a text form, an image form, a graphics form, or in another different media type. These different information sources are typically not compatible with each other and, further, have no common method of information display. Of course, the agent may be able to “hot key” from one application to another application so as to sequentially communicate with several different information sources and view all of the desired information. In some cases, the agent may have to quit the current application program and launch another application program to get information about that customer. In cases where there is not a “shop license” for the application program, an application program may be installed on some agent stations, but not installed on others. Therefore, one agent might have to transfer the customer to another agent who has the necessary application program.
Also, consider the case where the user has a mainframe information source, with multiple Legacy™ applications where the applications have a dumb terminal interface. The user may want to upgrade to a different mainframe or different application programs so as to be able to store more information, or more types of information, etc. In the past, the user had two choices: pay someone to re-enter the data for the new applications program, and take the chance that data may be lost and/or incorrectly entered; or simply forego the use of the old application/database and the information stored therein. The mainframe applications are costly and extremely time consuming to change or create from scratch. The user therefore often has a substantial investment in the applications and the data stored under those applications so the user will not want to lose that investment.
In order to provide quality service to the customer the agent may need to have access to some or all of the information, regardless of whether a Legacy™ application and/or some other application is being used, and regardless of the media type associated with that information. Further, the information should be presented to the agent in a consistent format so that the agent does not have to visually scan the screen trying to find the desired information.
Therefore, there is a need for a system which provides a uniform set of screens to the agent. That is, a system which combines and presents various types of desired or required information, regardless of the media, from various information sources to the agent in such a way that the screen displays appear to the agent as if provided by a single system. The fact that several information sources may be involved in providing the desired information displayed on the screen is not apparent to the agent, regardless of the physical platforms on which the information resides, or where these platforms are located,.
In the past, the agent had to manage multiple information sources by using a different screen or image for each source, and using various function keys, in order to obtain the desired information. For example, the dialer would obtain call record information from the host and would provide an initial screen to the agent. Then, if the agent needed additional information to service the customer then, typically, the agent would press a “hotkey”, which would cause the agent's station to switch from the view provided by the dialer to a view provided as an emulation of a dumb terminal connected to the host. The agent would 5 then see the screen provided by that information source or application. The agent could hotkey back and forth between the host and dialer screens as necessary. The agent or the station program could also cut and paste between screens, in the background, so that if the agent obtained the account number from the dialer screen the agent could hotkey, with the account number, to the screen provided by the host, tab or index over to the account number field on the view provided by the host application, and then insert the account number into that field on the host application and thereby cause the host to bring up and display the associated account record. If there are multiple host applications involved then there are multiple function keys, each hotkey invoking a different one of those applications. The agent therefore saw a different image each time that the agent was communicating with a different host. Each image that the agent saw, and the data that the agent saw, was at the discretion of the programmer who originally wrote that application and decided what information was to be presented on that screen, and in what format. To properly service a customer, the agent would have to go to different applications, or different pages within an application, to find the data or the necessary or desired information. Even then, some or most of the data fields presented may not be relevant to the problem that the agent is attempting to address.
Similarly, the agent may need to enter certain information into the various information sources and applications. Again, the agent has, in the past, had to hotkey between various applications so as to enter the information into different information sources, or the station entered the information only into a single host application program. This can lead to errors, where the agent does not type in exactly the same information into each information source, omissions, where the agent forgets to update an information source, and substantial losses in time and efficiency where multiple hosts and/or application programs must be updated individually.
It is well known to link similar programs together, such as over a network. An example of such is a company spreadsheet which must reflect the status of several departments. Each department may have its own spreadsheet, and the company spreadsheet will be linked to selected items, such as income, expenses, net profit, etc., in each department spreadsheet. Thus, a change in the spreadsheet in any department will automatically update the company spreadsheet when it is opened. However, the application programs running the various spreadsheets must be identical or designed to be compatible, something which cannot always be assured when working with, for example, a department purchased from a different company. That department may use computers and/or spreadsheet application programs which are not compatible with the computers and/or spreadsheets of the company. Likewise, in a call center, the different sources of information may use different computers and application programs, and may be incompatible. Therefore, there is a need for a method whereby information from various sources, even those which are mutually incompatible, is consolidated and presented in a uniform manner.
To be useful, a process must be simple to use. Therefore, most of the operation of the process must be transparent to the agent. That is, the agent must not need to know what host to access, what information to obtain, or the order of accessing the hosts.
Therefore, there is a need for a method for consolidating information from multiple sources into a single, user-definable, coherent set of screens.
There is also a need for a method for sequentially linking information sources so that an entry or an information update into a single information source, via a user defined and customized set of screens and/or information fields, automatically accesses related data or information in other sources, even when the information needed to access those other sources is not known to the agent.
There is also a need for a method which allows an agent to update an information item in all relevant information sources without the agent having to hotkey between applications, or individually select the information sources for updating. This method should run in the background so that a change in an information item on user customized screens, automatically updates all of the relevant sources.
Another limitation of the prior art is that the access time for some sources is quite long, easily reaching several seconds, and sometimes even more. When the agent switches to any such slow source to obtain information there will be a noticeable time lag while that slow source responds to the query and provides the desired information. This time lag reduces agent efficiency. This time lag may also be irritating to the customer who must wait until the slow source has provided the requested information to the agent. This time lag can be especially distressing to a customer if the agent must access several slow sources in order to obtain all of the information necessary to service the customer. Therefore, there is a need for a method to eliminate this delay time.